Wednesday, March 10, 2010

Engine Reassembly

Reassembly in progress! - Finally got around to putting assembling the motor. Took forever to get it back from the machine shop for one, two - bearing availability is scarce (Thanks Economy) - and three... well - Not a lot of available time heh.

The basic block assembly is pretty simplistic as long as the machine shop did their job correctly. I made sure to check the bearing tolerances and oil clearances prior to assembly with some plasti-gauge. Turned out to have rod bearing oil clearance of about 1.5 thousandths or so. With that - Added some assembly lube and went to town. Placed two pistons in the bottom case half first with rods attached and used it as a "base". After those went in I placed the first halves of the mains in and set the crank down (making sure to place the other two rods on the crank first).

Once it seated properly I put the other mains on the alternate block half and set that down on the first making sure the rods pushed up into the appropriate cylinders. Spinning the crank I lined up the rods/pistons and knocked in the pins and made sure to place the retainer clips back on.

From there it's pretty much done - torque everything down on the block and start buttoning it back up in reverse order as we took it apart. I've come to appreciate the heavy lifting themachine shops do.